Children's Youth Services Queensland

Activities report for 2006

Minutes of 2005 AGM noted the desire to extend the programs of the group outside the Brisbane metropolitan area. Time constraints imposed by busy lives and distance mean that opportunities for regular meetings are limited. To solve this, we set out to concentrate on one area of interest - literature - with the intention that each group member would hold an event in our own area.
The following meetings were successfully organised.

February - Children's book clubs in the public library. As part of the regular YPLG (Young People's Librarians' Group) meeting held at Redcliffe Library, members shared an overview of book clubs for children and teens organised outside school hours at public libraries. Speakers represented Toowoomba and the Darling Downs region, Caboolture, Ipswich, and Redland Shire. The experiences of these librarians gave a great deal of inspiration to begin to develop similar services.

March - All Booked Up: Ideas exchange. This was an afternoon gathering in a city bookstore where librarians, teacher librarians and the booksellers exchanged ideas and experiences on running book clubs. A great variety of approaches were discussed for both school and public library based book clubs. A full report on this activity can be viewed here.

June - Queensland Public Libraries Association. Some of our members reprised the February book clubs information session at a concurrent session as part of this major public library conference, held this year in Cairns.

July - BookSpeak at Noosa Library. Children's author Krista Bell has trademarked the expression BookSpeak to describe strategies she has developed for encouraging enthusiasm for children's literature and reading enjoyment. Aimed at family participation, this is ideal for public libraries. Our local librarian network of public librarians and teacher librarians are keen to establish a similar scheme collaboratively in the new year.

In addition, professional information sharing continued through the use of our Libraries for Lifelong Learning e-list hosted by State Library of Queensland.

A 'virtual' AGM was held in November, resulting in the return of the Office Bearers: Maureen O'Shea as convenor; Liz Blumson as secretary/treasurer. In addition, we hope to build on our regional networks by nominating regional representatives in Far North Queensland (Kristy Jones - Cairns City Library), Far West Queensland (Penny Jackson - Cunnamulla Library), Brisbane South (Jennifer Hall - Logan Libraries).

Maureen O'Shea
Convenor